Károly Mirnics, MD, PhD

Hattie B. Munroe Professor
Dean and Director, Munroe-Meyer Institute
Professor of Psychiatry, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, UNMC

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Phone: 402-559-6430

Károly Mirnics, MD, PhD, is the dean and director of the Munroe-Meyer Institute and Hattie B. Munroe Professor of Psychiatry, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Mirnics earned his medical degree from the University of Novi Sad (former Yugoslavia) School of Medicine, and his PhD from Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he established his own laboratory in 2000. In 2006, his laboratory moved to the department of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

In 2010, Mirnics was named James G. Blakemore Professor of Psychiatry and served as the departmental vice chair for research and associate director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, the oldest intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) research center in the United States. In 2016, he joined UNMC, becoming the director of the Munroe-Meyer Institute for Genetics and Rehabilitation (MMI). He was subsequently named dean and director of MMI in 2025.  MMI is one of the oldest and largest clinical, research, education and outreach IDD institutes in the world, with a 105-year history, 570 employees and approximately 400 long-term trainees. MMI provides services across more than 30 locations throughout the state of Nebraska, with more than 130,000 clinical visits yearly.

As an internationally recognized, disease-oriented neuroscientist, Mirnics collaborates with scientists across the world. His research team is working to uncover the molecular basis of human brain disorders and develop treatments for these conditions. His innovative research uses a variety of genetic, molecular, cell biology and behavioral tools across multiple diseases models, and he has attracted more than $20 million of extramural funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Mirnics serves on the editorial boards of more than a dozen prominent scientific journals and numerous national scientific advisory committees. He has authored more than 150 scientific publications, which have been cited more than 18,000 times.

For all of Mirnics' accomplishments as a researcher, teacher, community advocate and administrator, his greatest passion and desire is to improve the lives of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Since arriving at UNMC in 2016, he has received multiple prominent national and local awards and recognitions. These include (but are not limited to) the 2018 Help is Hope Award from Autism Action Partnership and recognition as the 2019 Friends of Scottish Rite Honoree by the masons. He currently serves on the board of directors of Special Olympic International and chairs the SOI Global Medical Advisory Committee, advising on strategic health issues of more than 4 million athletes across over 150 countries. Since 2022, he has been a member of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response National Advisory Committee on Individuals with Disabilities & Disasters, and since 2023, a member of the Omaha Children’s Museum Capital Project Advisory Group. Finally, under his leadership UNMC built the most advanced, award-winning, 220,000 square-foot, multipurpose building for MMI to serve  individuals with intellectual and developmental disability. In July of 2025, Mirnics received the University of Nebraska’s Presidential Innovation, Development, and Engagement Award, the highest award of the University of Nebraska system recognizing faculty who extend their academic expertise beyond the university to benefit the broader community.